The inspiration for this little painting came when I was doing a gallery tour in Canada. It was migration time, and the migratory birds followed a corridor through a valley which, at its top, had a big, new building, built with only a metal skeleton, filled with reflecting glass. The birds felt that they could fly through this obstacle – a big mistake! Every day, the concierge collected a full bucket of dead birds. A smart falconer, a friend of mine, advised him to put wires from the top of the building to the ground and hang black metal silhouettes of raptors that could move with the wind. Result: only a few birds instead of a full bucket. One of them was a golden-crowned kinglet. I noticed that it was still moving a little bit; thus not dead. Fifteen minutes later, it became more conscious, but did not fly away. I put it on the branch of a nearby tree, and took lots of pictures. You can enjoy the result in this painting — a good example of how many different ways one can get ideas for a nice painting. A few minutes later, the bird flew away, not knowing that he had posed for an artist and would be immortalized in a painting.

In both North America and Europe, the golden-crowned kinglet is well-represented in most wild forested areas and in our backyards.